To try and answer my own question (post #392), the only explanation I can give for the difference between CL and FlS - and why one fills up noticeably less time in my rotation than the other - is that as CL has a cast time some additional server communication and therefore latency, takes place at the end of the cast, whereas FlS carries out this communication during the GCD, leaving you open to cast again sooner.

Whatever the theoretical reason for this issue though, I now need to decide what to do about it. It seems I either needs to accept 200-300 wasted ms at the end of my rotation, add another CL/LB in, subtantially increasing my time between LvBs, or go for a full priority system of doing all my cast planning during the fight, which hasn't worked in the past. No option seems appealing.

Just as a follow-up to posting yesterday. 3'14" 5121dps Patchwerk It's essentially the same as my performance last week with the additional dps of the searing totem (366). I had a pretty sad 10+ sec per lava burst. My latency is usually really good ~60ms, so that just proves I have plenty of room to improve despite feeling like I did well. I recall really screwing up at one point and delaying a burst for letting a flame shock go unrefreshed for a cast or two. If my rotation was tighter, I might have gotten two additional lava burst and that'd be another 100 dps. Hopefully next week I'll remember to record it.

We had two demon locks and a ret paladin last night for our naxx clear + malygos run. I pretty much didn't bother with ToW at all. -Pretty impressive overall damage for me.

in my opinion, this part not full, this need another IF, becouse no reason to cast FS if 4-5 sec before LvB cooldown. it will minimize numbers on FS casts, and you can cast more lightnings.

Except if you look at the total damage from 1 FS cast (direct + dot) over the time casting, and compare that to the same for lightning bolt, you'll see that they're about the same (FS pulls ahead with the SEF change in 3.1)

Is it possible to have too tight a rotation?

Looking at WWS and reports on this forum, Ghando is struggling to hit 5k DPS and - assuming he is still using the same rotation he was a few weeks ago - using an extremely tight rotation. By contrast Ezareth is spam casting and sailing over 5k.

~ I am aware there are gear difference and anecdote is not the singular of yadda yadda... ~

Is is possible that some part of the LvB cooldown is handled server side, and that the client needs to receive a message saying "LvB is ready" before we can cast it again? As such anyone running very close to 8secs between LvBs is running into some "invisible" latency where LvB should be off CD, but is still being blocked by the server.

Someone with a better knowledge of client/server mechanics may shoot me down here, but I thought I would throw the idea out there.

Cooldowns are handled client-side. Which is why it will take a patch to fix the EM cooldown and they can't hotfix it. I'm thinking the difference is partially a half-second dead zone at the end of my second cycle, but mostly gear (Dying Curse in particular). Bottom line, Ezareth's spells hit significantly harder on average and a 300 damage differential on our average lightning bolts accounts for a lot of the disparity.

I have hit this "invisible" latency a few times (where LvB shows as off CD on my UI but the server still thinks its on CD), not sure if this latency is coming from my connection or server side lag. My latency varies between 120-150ms most of the time. The CD issues seem to hit during spikes (usually if quartz is showing <100ms or >200ms).

So there's lots of discussion here around boss rotations, but I've not seen a thing for trash rotations.

Anyone played around with different combinations and found one that they think works the best?

Something I'm playing with is this:

Flame shock first target while running into group
Fira Nova Totem
Lava Burst
Chain Lightning
Thunderstorm (as fira nova totem goes off)
Magma Totem
Chain Lightning
Lightning Bolt
Lava burst
Chain Lightning

Anyone played around with fira nova vs magma to figure out if it's better to just do magma the whole time? I couldn't get consistent enough numbers to tell.

I lay down Magma Totem at the start and don't bother with Fire Nova. Also, who cares about trash rotations? Use CL every cooldown, use AoEs as appropriate. Try to avoid losing a Lava Burst because your target dies as it's in the air.

I normally stick with magma totem and CL as my main trash dps spells, ill normally bounce my CLs and drop LvBs into the highest health mob in the pack. The only time I will TS is if the mobs are immune to knockback or they have been stunned by shockwave or holy wrath (I dont spec into imp fire nova).

I care about trash rotations as the faster people kill the trash, the faster you get through the instance. Also, in reference to a lava burst dying in the air, that's actually why I stand closer to the target (ie right on top of them).

Yes, boss rotations are more important, but maximizing dps on trash helps you get to the bosses faster, and finish the night sooner, and possibly kill more content because of it. I was mainly just curious if someone had found a good strategy with the fire totems.

Everyone needs to remember Moonkin aren't the only one's who provide this. Ret Paladins have the 3% haste as well.

Are you dropping the Searing Totem just to see numbers? I don't see how 366 dps for you > ToW for the entire raid.

His raid had 2 demo locks (presumably with Demonic Pact) and a ret pally, so if either of the demo locks matched or exceeded 2800 spell power unbuffed (and also assuming 100% uptime of the Demonic Pact buff), there wasn't a need for ToW.

There's actually a catch (I am not aware Blizz has done anything to address this yet) where a warlock's spell damage contribution from spirit doesn't factor into the raid wide buff from demonic pact. Fortunately, the locks in our raids easily exceed the 2800 threshold despite that. During that raid, I stuck with dropping magma and searing and enjoyed coming in #2 overall for chuckles. That 3% crit on packs of trash in Naxx is hardly a big deal considering Naxx's difficulty. Clearly, if our locks didn't show up for a raid, I would stick with using ToW.

One of our locks tried demo for a week. He was slightly over 2800 SP so was overwriting ToW, demo pact is definitely not 100% uptime and is gone if the pet dies. The loss of personal dps vs affliction far outweighed any benefit of his demo pact would have had over ToW (he was down over 1k dps vs his normal affliction numbers)

iirc you need 25% buffed haste to fit in 5xLB
556 haste ~16% --> 1,16(Rating_to_Percent) * 1,05(WoA) * 1,03(Moonkin/Ret pally) ~ 1,25 (25%)


To answer the question, yes you need the 3% of a moonkin/ret pally to fit in 5x LB (Leaving latency etc aside)

Alright thanks for the anwsers in both threads, will help a lot. Will be interesting to see if it will be better to fit in a CL or a last LB with latency once i get my upgrades and have around the haste required, or if i should drop more haste for less of another stat.

I tried doing a wait-method a couple months ago and was not happy with my DPS. For whatever reason, just fitting lava burst into my next spell and making sure I cram as many spells in between lava bursts as possible has worked best for me.

I'm continually reminded that what I see on my screen is *NOT* what the server sees, it is like there are 2 forms of latency in this game, the normal latency that is just reponse time between the server and some other factor I'm not understanding.

For example I've had instances during my normal latency of me getting hit by heigans lava when I was in the fourth zone. One time(the only time I've died on heigan) I was casting a lava burst in the fourth zone, well inside of the third zone lava when I died. My corpse was in the fourth zone and they ressed me after the fight, but to everyone else I was in the third zone. My ping was 200-300ms which is normal.

During battlegrounds for instance I can be the first person to a flag by quite a bit on my screen, someone else will run up and start capping a flag after me, yet they will finish first.

My point is when I do a "wait" method on lava burst my DPS suffers yet if I'm constantly spamming some spell some spell the server spell queue doesn't seem to lag. I also notice I can start casting lava burst on my screen a hair before the cooldown is up on my client side if I do it in this "queue method" of spamming your next spell after you start casting your current spell.

I've always though I've experienced some odd sort of latency personally, yet now I'm seeing more and more people experience it.

Ghando have you tried seeing if you have an increase in DPS by fitting an extra LB/CL into your rotation?

I'm a button masher
If my FS dot goes below 4 seconds I spam FS till it casts
if my LvB cooldown is less than 1.6s then I spam lava burst
otherwise i spam lightning bolt

and this has worked out pretty good so far.

That's my plan for this week. I wanted to try it out last week but the server lag was awful and given the timing-intensive nature of our DPS I just don't bother after a certain point. We'll see how it goes tonight.

I'm not a big fan of this effect... here's what I'm seeing.

Casting time is handled on the server.
Cooldowns and GCD are handled on the client.

This sucks for someone with decently bad latency. If you are spamming one spell (such as LB), this is not as much of a problem. Since the casting time is far greater than the GCD, you can start casting just a little bit after the GCD wears off. For me, on average, I can cast them when the bar reaches the "t" in "Bolt" on my cast bar. When heroism is up, it's about halfway through the bar. The only time this fails is when you have an unstable connection. Mine does this occasionally- I can cast VERY early as I'm saying, but I have a ping of 90-150. Looking at performance in other games (ones that show more or less realtime displays of latency), my connection looks like a triangle wave plotted on a graph, jumping between terrible latency and great many times per second. If this is the case, you should probably wait longer for each lightning bolt, or just mash the crap out of your key that you've bound to it (this works fairly well actually, in this case, but if you have consistently bad latency it's worse than casting early).

Things like cooldowns screw this up though. You can't start casting LvB before your current LB is up unless you've already wasted time casting something else while waiting for it. I usually do this because waiting for the LvB incurs double penalty: you can't start casting until the cooldown is up on your local machine, and you won't start casting on the server until X ms after you do on your machine. If I can catch the LvB's cooldown coming off while I'm in the middle of casting a LB, I'm getting about as close as I can to having a tight rotation.

The big advantage, actually, to casting very early with bad latency is that during heroism, your LvB's cast time is less than your GCD, but if you cast it in the middle of a current LB cast, the GCD will go cycle before the cast starts, leaving you open to cast another LB with minimal wasted time.

In other news, I wish I had a better connection so I could play as was intended by Blizzard

Edit: forgot to mention- during very bad latency spikes (such as all activity freezing for a second or so), if you are chaining LB, you can cast the next one EXTREMELY early. You have to balance out (in your head) how long the lag spike lasted vs. how long your LB cast is, but usually for me it's around the "g" in Lightning Bolt.